Why learn to code?

Coding is in essence the ability to tell a computer what to do. With the rise of smart phones, more and more of us carry around a little computer that can be programmed to do specific things through a coding language. Those of us who can speak code will be able to define what our devices can do, those of us who cannot speak code will be reliant on what others tell devices to do.

As we are surrounded by an ever increasing number of programmable devices, there has been a sudden increase in awareness that we need to enable young people to be able to define what these do.

Picture it this way: Imagine you had no concept of how to take ingredients and turn them into a meal for yourself and instead you only ever bought meals prepared for you by someone else. Without any knowledge of cooking, you had little idea of when you were being sold a good value meal or not; you weren’t sure whether you could create a meal without certain ingredients; you weren’t able to explain to someone how to make something exactly the way you like it.

I don’t think that every child needs to aspire to be a programmer, but every young person equipped with the ability to understand and write code is able to better understand the innovations that define their world.